Hello everyone. Super excited, just ordered a Roamio Pro and 4 minis. Just got tired with what Comcast is offering. I live in the Chicagoland area. My boxes arrive tomorrow and I can't wait. My few questions are, 1. I do most of my watching in my bedroom and the rest in my living room. Is there any advantages to having the Roamio in the bedroom vs the Mini. It's going to take a little more work to hardwire the Ethernet but I'm willing to do it. I just want to know if there are any features, advantages, or disadvantages. Anything I can do with the Roamio that I won't be able to do with the mini. 2. Will I be able to do OnDemand on multiple boxes at the same time. So watch Ondemnd on the Pro and a couple of the minis at the same time.

I would always put the main box in the area you do the most TV viewing if possible. There are several advantages that I can think of:

1. Channel changes are a little faster on the Roamio than on the Mini
2. You have access to using multiple tuners with the Roamio (i.e. flipping back and forth between different channels with a buffer). The Mini can't do this.
3. You never have to worry about the MoCA or ethernet connection going down and preventing you from watching TV.
4. You still have the live channel playing in the upper right corner when going into the menus. The Mini can't do this as it has to release the tuner to get into the menus.
5. If you use Amazon Instant Video, it is only available on the Roamio, not on the Minis.

I'm sure there are other reasons too, but those are the ones that first pop into my head.

When I first got my roamio and one mini, the ethernet was near the secondary tv so I put the roamio there. I asked this same question in this forum so you might find it with a search (it was probably around November) We have since done the wiring to put the roamio at the main location.

#2 in tarheel's list is the biggest advantage for us which we gained with the roamio. Another factor might be what inputs your tv has, we have one old tv which does not have hdmi. With the mini we would have had to use a special breakout cable (we are not currently hooking this tv up but it was closest to the ethernet so put the roamio here at first, at some point we might get another mini for this tv)

So, don't feel you need to wait to do your wiring, if you want to put the roamio at a secondary location temporarily and then move it, until you realize what you are missing it won't be that big of a deal.

one last thing- it is easier to stick a mini somewhere out of the way than a roamio. Our mini is now on a tv in the bedroom, we put it on a shelf in a closet behind the wall the tv is on, run the wires through the wall, and use an rf remote to power it. We bought a slide remote to use on our main tv/roamio, and took the roamio remote (plus slide dongle) to use in the bedroom tv/mini.

Only thing i don't "like" about the mini in my bedroom is that I can't download from my NAS with pytivo. I have to get out of bed and go to the other room to initiate the transfer on the roamio then go back to the bedroom (or stay in the living room) to watch the show. That's a biggie for me but most people probably don't use that feature as much as I do.

Only thing i don't "like" about the mini in my bedroom is that I can't download from my NAS with pytivo. I have to get out of bed and go to the other room to initiate the transfer on the roamio then go back to the bedroom (or stay in the living room) to watch the show. That's a biggie for me but most people probably don't use that feature as much as I do.

Why is that even a restriction? I just started using pytivo with a Mini, and I didn't realize I could do that on the main box. I actually send programs manually.

Update. I got my Roamio Pro and 4 Mini's. Had Comcast add the tivo code and everything is working fine except I am unable to use on demand on more then 1 box at the same time. I have all 6 tuners working and moca is running great. But if I'm watching on demand on one box and someone else tries on demand on another box the first box freezes and the second box works. Does anyone have any ideas or is this how it will work?

After looking in the tivo site it states you can have multiple stream of ondemand. But I'm not sure what to do next.